


like calls to like

by r_holland



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Destiny, Enemies to Lovers, First Meetings, M/M, The Crusades, basically just enemies to grudging understanding and respect, except not the lovers part yet, vague mentions of andy and quynh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_holland/pseuds/r_holland
Summary: They meet for the first time on the battlefield, face to face, blood caked into the ground under their feet. Nicolo doesn’t know much of the Arabic language, but he recognizes the word that falls out of the stranger’s mouth, full of vitriol.“You,” he snarls, and Nicolo bares his teeth in reply.There is no more need for talking.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 155





	like calls to like

**Author's Note:**

> have i watched this movie three times now? yes :)  
> i did do some research for this, so i did try to have at least some level of Historical Accuracy, but if there are any mistakes, i claim it as artistic license. there's only so much research i'm willing to do for 4k of a fanfiction, lmao.  
> pls be gentle with me, this is the first fic i've written in... god, almost a year.

Here he is at the end of the world. 

If it’s not the end of the world, it certainly feels like it. Bodies are strewn about everywhere under his feet, both his people and the Franks, the so-called Crusaders, finally alike in death. There’s a sickening smell to the air, one that Yusuf had never known, before he’d gotten involved in this endless battle, and now was unlikely to ever forget. The air was painted in screams, the earth with blood. Even Yusuf’s own shirt is soaked through with it, but all of the blood on him is his own. 

He’d been dead. 

He’s sure of it, remembers the feeling of steel slicing into his chest, the warmth of his own blood as it spilled down over him, staining his clothes and skin and hands, draining the life from him. The feeling of his breath stuttering to a stop.

He remembers the quiet. 

But here he is still at the end of the world, breathing again, pushing himself to his feet. Somehow, he’s here to fight another day. He doesn’t tell anyone. Of course he doesn’t tell anyone. Doesn’t speak of the way that his flesh knits together again, again, and again. The way that he gasps back to life when his breath gets taken away. At the very least, he is lucky for the chaos, lucky that everybody is too busy fighting for their own lives to notice that he keeps losing his. That it keeps coming back to him. Nobody notices, and Yusuf keeps throwing himself into the fight. 

He dies again. He dies more. There’s a certain recklessness that comes with this invulnerable revival, and Yusuf makes an oath to himself to take down as many of the Crusaders down with him every time he goes, these men that do not know how to leave Yusuf and his people well enough alone. 

He finds himself drifting from the warriors around him – people he used to call friends, call comrades. He doesn’t feel as if he fits among them, anymore. 

He’s operating on borrowed time. 

Maybe this is a gift. A blessing, from Allah, keeping him alive, letting him fight. 

Besides, the harder he throws himself into danger, the less he sleeps, and the less he sleeps, the less he dreams. 

There are three of them. Specters. Haunting his dreams. Two women, far away, with dark hair and dark eyes and warrior hearts. Yusuf doesn’t so much mind dreaming about them. They seem lovely and fierce and beautiful, and they clearly care for each other a great deal, unmissable even through the fragmented images he catches. But the third… 

Yusuf hates dreaming about _him_. 

The man is lean and strong, with curtains of dark blonde hair and often stubble along his cheeks. Like Yusuf, he sleeps with a weapon within reach, but lately he hasn’t been sleeping much at all. Instead, he sits and looks up at the stars, asking them what has happened to him. Yusuf watches, when he closes his eyes, and he although he may not understand the words, but he understands the sentiment. It’s far too familiar. 

Yusuf hates him because he is not far away at all. 

The Crusaders, they call themselves – invaders, all of them, coming here and slaughtering and still managing to delude themselves that they’re doing good. That they’re being _righteous_. And this man, this other invulnerable soldier in Yusuf’s dreams, he’s one of them. He’s the worst of them, really, because he believes in the cause, true and devoted. Dedicated in his faith. 

Yusuf dreams of him almost every night. Dreams of him speaking, nonsense that Yusuf can’t understand, a soft and steady voice in the midst of chaos. Dreams of him sleeping, brow furrowed and restless. Dreams of him killing. Again and again, Yusuf dreams of him killing. 

He needs to find him, find him in that gleaming hood with his polished longsword and end this. Take this man out of play, this unkillable enemy. He is starting to become almost as reckless as Yusuf is, killing nearly as many people. Yusuf doesn’t know why Allah would give him this gift and balance it out with the same on the other side, but there’s a heavy sense of predeterminism to it all. As if they're meant to find each other. As if Yusuf needs to find him. And Yusuf needs to kill him. 

The only problem is, he’s not sure where precisely the man _is_. Dreams do not a good tracker make. And it is chaos all around him, all the time, and all around the other man, too. Trying to separate one piece of chaos from the next is near impossible. When he finally does find him, he isn’t even looking. 

***

Nicolo doesn’t know what’s happening to him. The first time, he called it a miracle – everyone did, when he came gasping alive in the medicine tent, bloody and bandaged and somehow none the worse for wear. They took it as a sign that the Crusades were working. That they were important – destined. 

That Nicolo was important. 

He went to bed that night thanking God for choosing him, for giving him this sign. Clearly, he had been spared for something, some reason that he was sent back down to Earth. Whatever it is he was meant to do, he prayed to God that he would have the strength to do it. And then, once that mission was done, he would be allowed to rest. 

Now, he is not so sure. 

Maybe it had just not been his time to go. But then injury after injury is healed, and he has to wonder: if now is not his time, when is? 

And then start the dreams. 

The man in his dreams is one of _them_ , one of the enemy, and Nicolo watches again and again as he slaughters his people, and he looks up to the sky to ask _why_. 

Why give him this man? _These_ visions? There’s something captivating about him, about the way he throws himself into danger again and again, fierce and fast and skilled, taking down everyone in his path. Nicolo doesn’t want to see it, but night after night, he closes his eyes, and there is the man, with his dark eyes and broad shoulders and gleaming scimitar, slashing through the air. 

Nicolo watches him die. But he is of the same mold as Nicolo himself – even when blood pours down his chest and arms and hands, he always gets back up again. 

Nicolo prays for an answer, but he never receives one. Not that he really expected to. 

One night, Nicolo sits alone by the fire, and slices into his own palm with his sword, over and over, deeper and deeper, watching the skin close over every time. He could hold his hands to the flame and come away intact. 

It is the perfect gift for a war. A blessing. But Nicolo watches every day as his men die around him, as the soil beneath them gets trampled and ripped apart and stained red, and he thinks: _why_. 

It is not a gift, exactly, to have yourself torn apart over and over for a war that seems as if it will never be won. It is not a blessing to watch as everyone around him dies. He was chosen for this, but to what end? Why now, and why him? There must be a reason. But it is the right thing to do, to stay, to get up every day and fight for his people. To die for them, as many times as he can bear. And Nicolo may have many faults, but he will never turn away from the right thing. 

And so he fights. And he dies – dies until he breathes again, until his skin is intact enough to fight again. And then the cycle starts once more. 

It’s never ending. And still, always, every night: the dreams. 

It is not always the man – the stranger on the other side of the war, killing Nicolo’s men. There are two women, too, together, in a far away place. They’re like him, too – he thinks they’re coming for him. Looking. But it is often the man. Nicolo does not know what it is that makes him different, but the dreams feel sharper whenever he makes an appearance, as if he brings all the scrambled images into a clearer focus. 

Nicolo knows that perhaps he should be finding this man. Stopping him. But he is so tired, of all the blood and the carnage. Sometimes it is hard to remember what he is fighting for at all. And there are quite enough of the regular soldiers that need killing without trying to best one that will not die. If they are meant to meet – meant to _fight_ – they will. Nicolo is sure of it. So he stays, and he fights, and he waits for the mysterious muslim man’s face to come to him at night, as weary and exhausted as Nicolo feels. 

He likes the dreams of him sleeping, best – his face is so much more peaceful, and Nicolo can pretend they are both what they would have been without the frame of the Crusades between them – two young men, in opposite worlds. Can pretend it is just a dream, that it means nothing at all. 

Destiny does bring them together eventually, just as Nicolo knew it would. They meet for the first time on the battlefield, face to face, blood caked into the ground under their feet. Nicolo doesn’t know much of the Arabic language, but he recognizes the word that falls out of the stranger’s mouth, full of vitriol. 

“ _You_ ,” he snarls, and Nicolo bares his teeth in reply. 

There is no more need for talking. 

***

They kill each other for the first time on the blood-drenched soil, swords coming together fast and hard. 

They are exceptionally well-matched. Yusuf can admit that much. But Yusuf has been looking for this man, has been waiting for him, and he is determined that he must win this fight. 

When the Frank comes gasping back alive again, it’s a surprise. Yusuf sits and watches it happen – the battle has long-moved on without them. He knew it would happen, but he had thought, maybe, that at the hand of _his_ blade, this man would stay dead. That he was somehow destined to kill him. That this was the reason behind it all. 

But the wound in his chest disappears slowly, and then he’s taking a breath, and Yusuf watches in stunned silence: is this what it looks like every time? Death’s cold hand in one moment, and life’s breath the next? 

The man’s pale eyes, when they open, are angry. They really are well-matched. Yusuf may have won the first bout, but he does not win the second. 

The Frank is standing over Yusuf when he makes his way back to the world, eyes hooded, some of that same shock echoed in the back of them. 

And off they go again. 

Yusuf loses track of the number of times they fight, doesn’t count the number of times that he dies. He’s certain that he dies less than the invader. He must die less than him.

They part in the evening, drenched in blood. They’ll come back to each other tomorrow. 

And tomorrow and tomorrow. 

When Yusuf closes his eyes that night, the man’s deep, clear eyes are waiting. 

The days pass and the rest of the war seems to fade into the background, giving way to the inevitable: Yusuf and Nicolo on a battlefield somewhere, waging a war in a contest drenched in blood. 

Yusuf isn’t sure when or where exactly he learned his opponent’s name – it feels like something he’s always known, like a fact as immutable as his own name. As if Nicolo has always been there, and always will be. 

But eventually, one of them will have his luck run out. Eventually, one of them will die for the last time. 

And it is not going to be Yusuf. 

The dreams have shifted, now. The women are still the same, fractured and far away, but grounded, as if he’s merely glimpsing their lives as they happen. The dreams of Nicolo are not like that: not any longer. They take on the tinge of regular dreams; nonsensical, unexplainable, sometimes completely unreal in every sense, utterly impossible. And yet, Nicolo’s face crops up, again and again, as if his waking brain has become so used to his features that he must naturally appear in even the most unnatural of dreams.

Yusuf does his best to forget the way that Nicolo smiles in his dreams when he meets him in their endless war of steel and blood, but it does not always work. 

***

The day that Yusuf puts his sword down, Nicolo does not hesitate to follow. It feels just as inevitable as their meeting was, because they have both begun to realize: they cannot fight forever. 

“Tired,” Yusuf tells him simply, in the _lingua franca_ – the common, mixed trader’s language, the only language they have found enough mutual understanding through which to communicate. Nicolo doesn’t have a great grasp on it, not nearly as good as Yusuf, who speaks clearly and fluently as if he has been speaking the language his whole life. Nicolo wonders, sometimes, whether he was a merchant of some kind before he got all wrapped up in the fighting, wonders when he learned the language and for what purpose. Wonders what his life had been like. 

Not that it matters. 

“Tomorrow?” Nicolo offers, and Yusuf nods, his dark curls falling over his forehead. Nicolo still wants to kill him, he thinks, but he _has_ killed him, day after day, again and again, in more and more creative ways. And yet nothing has changed. 

Nicolo thinks sometimes that the right thing to do would be to go back to his people, to their frontlines. For he and Yusuf both to forget the other ever even existed. 

As if he ever could. 

The longer they fight he clearer it seems to Nicolo that neither will die at the other’s hand. All they’re doing, day after day, is marking time. All Nicolo is gaining is a grudging respect for the strength in Yusuf’s dark arms, and an uneasy sense of understanding that he never even wanted. 

“Tomorrow,” Yusuf agrees. The words sound different coming from his mouth, but Nicolo doesn’t know if that is because of his own accent, or Yusuf’s. He wipes the sweat from his brow with the hem of his shirt, and Nicolo feels his own eyes track the movement. 

He does not show up tomorrow. 

He does what he knows he _should_ do, instead. He goes back to his people, joins his frontlines, stops waging his own private, never-ending war, and rejoins the one he signed up for. 

He’s once again surrounded by his people, by his friends, by everything he had before Yusuf’s dark eyes forced their way into his life. 

He’s never felt so alone. 

Nicolo resolves to simply forget about Yusuf as much as he can, forget about his new impenetrability. Go back to the way things should be. He tries, every day he tries, but it is not as easy as he would wish it to be. 

He cannot turn a blind eye to the way that his skin closes, as much as he may want to. And he cannot forget his fellow immortal, no matter how much he tries. 

The problem is that Nicolo begins seeing Yusuf in every soldier that he fells, every enemy he strikes who does not get back up. Panic starts to climb its way up his throat every time he sees a flash of dark eyes or dark curls go down, at the wounds that do not close. 

He starts to wonder if he is doing the right thing at all. 

And when he does meet Yusuf on the field again, the mess of emotion that flares in his stomach is as startling as it is unwelcome. It’s tangled and snarled and wholly complicated, but there is one thing that rises to the top: he does not want to kill him again, even once, even if he knows he will get right up again. 

Even if it means dying again himself. 

Yusuf meets him at the centre of the chaos, bodies strewn all around them, swords flying, but it feels just like the first time. Nicolo feels that same flare of recognition, and thinks, not for the first time: like calls to like. 

Yusuf’s eyes, when Nicolo finally brings himself to meet them, are angry, as is the first strike of steel. Nicolo deflects it on the strength of habit alone. 

He meets those eyes again, and for once he is grateful that he knows the right word: “Sorry,” he says. 

***

Something in Yusuf’s blood knew that Nicolo would not return to their meeting ground. From the moment he put down his sword, it had the weight of a last time. Of an ending. But when he arrives, the next morning, and Nicolo isn’t there, he finds his body singing with something he did not expect: anger. And below that is the bittersweet tang of disappointment. Yusuf has no reason to be disappointed. This – killing this man, again and again. It has only been a distraction. In leaving, Nicolo is simply reminding him of what it is they came to fight for. 

As if he could ever really forget. 

He goes to sleep that first night to find Nicolo’s face behind his eyelids. It’s an oddly sweet dream, sundrenched and relaxed. Nicolo is smiling, and Yusuf is smiling back. 

Yusuf wakes feeling even angrier than before. 

He does not go to their meeting ground again. He doesn’t think he could bear the weight of it. Instead, he throws himself back into the fight. This war of invasion echoes the bouts between him and Nicolo: it does not feel as if it will ever be won. And if he thought he was being reckless before, now he is 100 times more so. Flinging himself into conflicts, scimitar whirling. The bite of steel against his own skin does not hurt so bad, anymore. And Yusuf is unafraid to die. If he has to win this conflict single handedly, he will. 

He sleeps even less. He doesn’t want to close his eyes, doesn’t want to see the fair skin and pale eyes that he knows are waiting for him.

He doesn’t mean to find Nicolo again on the battlefield, but he supposes it was simply another in a long line of inevitabilities. At the end of this, at the very end, they will be the only ones left standing, and it’s foolish to pretend otherwise. 

Those clear eyes, when they meet Yusuf’s, are surprised. Perhaps it is only Yusuf’s own wishful thinking that reads regret. 

Yusuf does not have time for surprise. That same anger is back, singing through his blood, the very same that has him lying awake long after dark staring at the ceiling and cursing Nicolo’s name. 

The first clash of steel is electric. Yusuf had nearly forgotten the feeling of coming up against a true equal, someone who can match you at every turn. When Nicolo looks up and meets his gaze behind the sword and says, in that horribly stilted _lingua franca_ , “Sorry,” Yusuf laughs. 

Something flashes in Nicolo’s eyes. 

“No,” he says, deflecting Yusuf’s next strike. It’s a miracle Yusuf can even hear him above all the noise. “I’m _sorry_.” 

Yusuf strikes again. Nicolo is not attacking – he is just bringing his blade up to block Yusuf’s, the most cursory of defenses. This is not what Yusuf had wanted. 

“Fight back,” he yells at Nicolo in his own language. He will not understand, but it’s the only language in which Yusuf can reach the words, right now. 

“No,” Nicolo insists, and this time he doesn’t even raise his blade to defend himself. Yusuf yells in frustration as he pulls the swing, redirecting it at the last second, only barely grazing Nicolo at his shoulder. 

They stare at each other, two unmoving points in the centre of the carnage, both breathing hard. 

“Fight back,” Yusuf says again, this time in a language that Nicolo will understand. This time, it comes out more like a plea. 

***

Nicolo does not fully recognize the words of the _lingua franca_ that Yusuf is using to plead with him, but he can read the intention behind those wide, dark eyes. 

“No,” he insists again, holding Yusuf’s gaze. He’s made the decision, and he’s going to stick to it. “I’m not going to fight you,” he tells Yusuf in his own dialect, in Ligurian, trusting that he will know what he means. 

Yusuf raises his sword, but he doesn’t strike again. At least, he doesn’t strike Nicolo. A sword comes flying at Nicolo’s head from somewhere beside them, where the regular war still wages. It is one of Yusuf’s people, but Yusuf still deflects the strike before it can touch Nicolo’s skin, easy as breathing. He yells something at the soldier that Nicolo doesn’t understand, and then he turns back to him, brow furrowed. “Why,” he says, _lingua franca_ again. 

Nicolo shrugs. He does not have the words to explain how he feels, not even in his own language. There is only one thing that stands out, loud and certain: he will not kill Yusuf again. 

He’s been thinking a lot, about this fight, about this war. About how he and Yusuf are just the same. About how many young men just like Yusuf he’s been killing, men who don’t get back up at the end of it all. 

And for what?

Nicolo has always been secure in his faith. He always felt sure that he was doing the right thing. But he no longer feels secure in this war. 

Yusuf stares at him with those dark eyes, inscrutable. 

Nicolo does not know if Yusuf has been thinking the same things; if he even has the cause to. Nicolo and his people brought this war to him: he did not ask for it. He could raise his sword right now, could fell Nicolo where he stands, as many times as he wished to. Nicolo has decided. He will not raise the blade to defend himself against this man.

Yusuf still says nothing, watching Nicolo as if he’s a puzzle that must be solved. But when another blade comes for Nicolo’s chest, Yusuf knocks it aside once again, his dark eyes not leaving his face. 

“Okay,” Yusuf says finally. And then he plunges back into the fray, and Nicolo has lost him again. 

***

That night, Nicolo can’t sleep. He’s been sleeping less and less – there is too much to think about, too much to occupy his mind. 

Have they really misinterpreted God’s wishes so terribly? The longer Nicolo thinks on it, the less certain he is that he’s been doing the right thing at all. 

He packs a bag that night. 

It’s too easy to find him, in the dead of night, as if perhaps he’d known where to find him all along. And when he treads quietly up to the camp, there is Yusuf, sitting awake at the entrance, as if he’s been waiting for Nicolo this whole time. 

“Hello,” he says solemnly, and Nicolo can’t help but smile at him. 

“Hello,” he says in response, the language tripping off his tongue. He raises his packed bag in clumsy pantomime. “Come?” he asks. For all that he came here with confidence, he is not at all sure what Yusuf’s response will be. By all rights, they’re enemies. There’s no tangible reason for that to change. 

But Yusuf looks up at him clear-eyed. For the first time, Nicolo looks at him, and thinks he looks very young. 

“Yes,” he says, and Nicolo smiles. He has a feeling that this is merely the beginning. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! xx


End file.
